Who knew about webcomics? A short PBS video talks to online authors

The genre is as old as the Web itself but now it's getting mainstream.

Earlier this week, PBS posted a 7-minute documentary on its PBS Off Book YouTube channel, quickly exploring “The Rise of Webcomics” using the voices of several notable authors and webcomics promoters: Christina Xu of Breadpig, Nick Gurewitch of Perry Bible Fellowship, Sam Brown of Exploding Dog, Lucy Knisley of Stop Paying Attention, and Andrew Hussie of Homestuck. The five talk about what draws them to their subjects and why they think the webcomic is a superior medium.

“I think webcomics are interesting because they have kind of a lot of different lineages.” Christina Xu says in the video, “There's the standard Marvel DC comic books, there's the newspaper comic strips, and then there's also the zine, and I think for me, webcomics are interesting 'cause they combine all three and they make it available to such a wide audience.”

We here at Ars have known about the beauty and versatility of webcomics for ages, as reflected in our recent staff list of the most incredible webcomics, and in our reader-picks follow-up story. Wikipedia's list of notable webcomics even goes back to 1985. Still, the genre hasn't had mainstream appeal until recently (XKCD and The Oatmeal seem to be two of the most well-known, but not necessarily always the best-loved, comics). Whether that growing popularity is coming from a wider swath of population having regular exposure to the Internet, or from the slow death of local newspapers' “funny columns,” or just from better content being available online, the PBS documentary doesn't venture to speculate. But the authors featured in PBS' video all either cite collaboration with other comic creators or constant feedback from the audience as factors that set webcomics apart from older comic formats.

You know, the most successful webcomic of all time, Penny Arcade, which is so successful that it has spawned its own cons, a large business enterprise surrounding the comic, and numerous related web series, not to mention a great deal of work for hire?

You know, the most successful webcomic of all time, Penny Arcade, which is so successful that it has spawned its own cons, a large business enterprise surrounding the comic, and numerous related web series, not to mention a great deal of work for hire?

Just a little?

Hah, PA was my first thought too. They raised a Kickstarter of half a million dollars to remove ads from the site.

You know, the most successful webcomic of all time, Penny Arcade, which is so successful that it has spawned its own cons, a large business enterprise surrounding the comic, and numerous related web series, not to mention a great deal of work for hire?

Just a little?

Hah, PA was my first thought too. They raised a Kickstarter of half a million dollars to remove ads from the site.

Totally hear you on that. I guess I was trying to think of very mainstream cartoons that don't just apply to gamers or technically-minded people or the very web-savvy. Stuff that you'd find shared on Facebook. But yeah, Penny Arcade is fantastically successful, so maybe it should be there, but I wasn't trying to list *all* of the mainstream webcomics, either. Just trying to illustrate a point.

You know, the most successful webcomic of all time, Penny Arcade, which is so successful that it has spawned its own cons, a large business enterprise surrounding the comic, and numerous related web series, not to mention a great deal of work for hire?

Just a little?

I agree that Penny Arcade deserves a mention here. But xkcd definitely merits the top spot. I haven't found official readership stats (if they exist), but a quick check of Google Trends and Alexa indicates that xkcd has roughly twice the clout of Penny Arcade (since around 2009):

One of the major and most appealing differences between web and print for me: webcomics tend to have a forum attached, which creates an instant community that often extends to not just other readers but also the author, and other authors, etc. etc. I've been a member of one webcomic forum for more than ten years, it's still one tab I always have open. Then there is, of course, the obvious freedom to deal with certain types of content in certain types of ways that syndicated print media generally can't touch, for either social or financial reasons. Plus you don't have to buy a newspaper just to read them.

You know, the most successful webcomic of all time, Penny Arcade, which is so successful that it has spawned its own cons, a large business enterprise surrounding the comic, and numerous related web series, not to mention a great deal of work for hire?

Just a little?

I agree that Penny Arcade deserves a mention here. But xkcd definitely merits the top spot. I haven't found official readership stats (if they exist), but a quick check of Google Trends and Alexa indicates that xkcd has roughly twice the clout of Penny Arcade (since around 2009):

Interesting choice of authors, all of whom I'd never heard of. I'd have expected them to get Scott Kurtz, if only because he's made a lot of noise about web comics, though I suppose he's a bit too geeky for them.

@cheesecake23:Cyanide and Happiness is another surprisingly popular webcomic, and it's the dark horse for those Google Trends, it's been humming along right alongside XKCD for years. It seems to have a more international readership as well.

This is neat, and I'll have to check out Stop Paying Attention, but it's so choppily edited it reminded me a class project where I cut and pasted segments from sampling documentaries (Copyright Criminals and RiP!: A Remix Manifesto) into a 5-minute summary - these are hardly full-length interviews! Is there a longer program forthcoming?

I'm still trying to figure out what that first lady meant by "the zine". Was she referring to traditionally published magazines, or some sort of more underground version of printed anthologies of comics? I was always under the impression that the mythical 'zine was some fantasy idea that the publishers had of a magical electronic version of the magazine that would have lots of ads and still make us pay $3 a copy.

I know I have a lot of comics to catch up on in my favourite webcomic (8-bit theatre) http://nuklearpower.com, I even bought Brian Clevinger's first edition of his novel Nuklear Age, I kind of wish I was his editor as they let a lot of the usual grammar issues through which you find in first editions. Doubles of And/The, the odd transposed word or misspelling. I'm minorly dyslexic and such things bring me to a full stop ruining the page flow for me. Great book though, loved the story and the characters.

Dresden Codak has a kickstarter going right now. The author had no idea how much people liked it until it blew past his first batch of stretch goals in a few days. It's only half-over and is already the 4th-highest comic KS ever. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/156 ... k-volume-1 Check out the archives ; I think they will appeal to Arsians (and then back the kickstarter cause I want to hit the $700k stretch goal http://dresdencodak.com/archives/ Oh and the author has a separate art blog dresdencodak.tumblr.com/post/833149000/primary-secondary-a-tale-of-two-focal-points

Ohh didn't know about that. I love Dresden Codak.

I used to be into webcomics, in the early 2000's, I loved Megatokyo. Not so much now. I read Cyanide & Happiness and xkcd, but that is pretty much it. And Dresden Codak, and whenever Gone with the blastwave comes up with a new page.

I think the doc doesn't mention PA first, because its style is very similar to traditional 'newspaper comics' (even though the subject matter isn't. Let's go with game magazine in stead of newspaper), and second, because it's become so much more than just the comic, with the cons, the games, etc.

I've been reading Homestuck pretty much non-stop since I watched this. It's pretty great. Nice use of sound, animation, and interactive elements.

I think the doc doesn't mention PA first, because its style is very similar to traditional 'newspaper comics' (even though the subject matter isn't. Let's go with game magazine in stead of newspaper)

Early PA actually varied widely... But eventually they settled for almost always using that format because it just worked for them. If you look through the archive though you'll see their experiments and those times when they get an idea that just needs more space (early cardboard samurai for instance was full page style).

Scott McCloud had some interesting ideas when it came to web comics (as well as comics in general).

Scott McCloud was utterly wrong about webcomics actually. He was right that they were going to be a major medium, but he was very wrong about how webcomics would actually work.

The whole "infinite canvas" thing was a bad idea, for instance. As it turns out, having the ability to go infinitely far in all directions is not actually very useful, because that's not how humans best read nor experience comics. While the infinite canvas IS useful in one direction (horizontally or vertically), its just not useful as an actual canvas, its more like a really long scroll.

Animations are a neat idea, but as it turns out, they're not very practical. Very few webcomics use them, and while they CAN be used effectively, most people don't mess with them. Part of the problem is that it messes with the medium, and part of the problem is that animation is a lot of work. GPF used minimal animation many years ago to represent things fading in and out of reality, and it was effective. On the other hand, it took until the predecessors to Homestuck for a comic to really use animation properly.

This is not to say that it cannot be done, but that most comics just don't need it or want it.

Microtransactions are another region where he was terribly wrong - while video games use them somewhat, comics don't, and really as it turned out micropayments are just a nasty drain on a small number of people rather than an egalitarian way to pay for stuff.

I don't know if Kevin and Kell was the first, but User Friendly definitely wasn't.

For most of its existence, Kevin and Kell has been a successful niche comic within the furry community (as I'm sure someone called "fluffy" would know).

However, in its early days, it certainly wasn't a commercial enterprise in the way User Friendly was.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, UF was widely considered to be the template that all "webcomics as businesses" aspired to, and was read by pretty much the entire geek community.

Kevin and Kell has only become mainstream since its newspaper deal... but that was fairly recent by comparison (2004).

Its really more complicated than that.

Kevin and Kell was the first webcomic by someone who made a living making comics - the author of K&K has been a syndicated cartoonist since the 1980s. It was actually a fairly big deal that he had a webcomic in the first place.

However, his success was kind of backwards, so people don't really count K&K as it wasn't really "self sufficient" on its own at the time, IIRC.

While we're bringing up gaming comics, I'm surprised nobody's mentioned VG Cats yet. I used to read AppleGeeks a lot, but once they blew up the Apple store and decided to reformat it Hawk killed most everything I was reading it for, so I stuck to the Lites thereafter. Then it just died out of the blue altogether.

These days it's pretty much just xkcd unless someone links me to something.

I don't know if Kevin and Kell was the first, but User Friendly definitely wasn't.

For most of its existence, Kevin and Kell has been a successful niche comic within the furry community (as I'm sure someone called "fluffy" would know).

As opposed to User Friendly, which was a successful niche comic within the geek community. K&K was always a commercial enterprise, and Holbrook started it long before he even knew about the "furry fandom" (in fact he was pretty weirded out by it, but eventually came to realize that they were his biggest supporters so he'd might as well run with it).

Quote:

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, UF was widely considered to be the template that all "webcomics as businesses" aspired to, and was read by pretty much the entire geek community.

I agree that Penny Arcade deserves a mention here. But xkcd definitely merits the top spot. I haven't found official readership stats (if they exist), but a quick check of Google Trends and Alexa indicates that xkcd has roughly twice the clout of Penny Arcade (since around 2009):

I just checked comScore stats on this. They're actually pretty similar: 1.9m uniques for PA, 1.7m for xkcd, but they toggle back and forth month by month. More interesting? The Oatmeal beats them both. 2.9m uniques.

You know, the most successful webcomic of all time, Penny Arcade, which is so successful that it has spawned its own cons, a large business enterprise surrounding the comic, and numerous related web series, not to mention a great deal of work for hire?

Just a little?

I agree that Penny Arcade deserves a mention here. But xkcd definitely merits the top spot. I haven't found official readership stats (if they exist), but a quick check of Google Trends and Alexa indicates that xkcd has roughly twice the clout of Penny Arcade (since around 2009):

I am actually surprised to see xkcd above PA. Then again maybe I shouldn't be.

Its just that PA has a huge business enterprise around it, while xkcd is... well, what it is. Insanely popular though, I suppose.

It somewhat saddens me to see the Oatmeal as popular as it is.

Ah well, at least Google is still the #1 website.

Isn't xkcd's high rank on the Google Trends also largely a symptom of its relative obscurity? I often have to Google stuff to understand the quirkier jokes and nuances. Meanwhile Penny Arcade is pretty straight forward and has the relevant information in the newspost. I never Google PA.

It was one of the longest running webcomics (started in 2001, and ending in August 2010, spanning just short of 1800 pages), centered around a 'creative' take on the story of Final Fantasy I. The fact that it didn't get into this PBS article shows two things:

1) There are many webcomics out there that have been around for quite some time that should totally be read, and